**snicker** Cordy and Wes pretending to be Buffy and Angel? Never. Gets. Old.
"I love you so much, I almost forgot to brood!"
"Gasp. No. We musn't"
Kiss me! Bite me!
;D
;D
Heee! The sewers, all bleak and oppressive and homey. ;D I love babbly, nerdy, half-insane-o Fred.
I also love dorky, "I'm fine!", ice-cream buying Angel.
Spring-loaded decapitation machine aaaaaaaand here come the Burkles! The whole mis-direction with thinking they're clients and so on is done very cutely.
Ha! Recently relocated and having trouble adjusting.
Heee! Dorky, uncomfortable, "aw shucks" Angel meets Fred's "very normal parents". "Your prop is dripping."
And, of course, more lovely misdirection. The Burkles with their mysterious quiet conversation between themselves and Fred leaving and all. Are they dangerous? Is Fred running from them? Are they evil?
Ha!! Angel wants to know if they think he's fat. Ah ha ha ha ha!! ;D
Love love love love Lorne, with his adorable fluffy robe and his night-cap and his destroyed night-club. Plus, there's more misdirection, with him talking about monsters and running and all.
Actually, this whole storyline is a nice kind of twist or inversion on the Buffy ep "Family".
"They're not fake, and it's only a little eyeliner."
I like how Lorne has a spine in this ep and stands up for himself. Also? That he doesn't let them sweep him under the rug - won't fake the fact that he's a demon.
"He and Angel make monster movies together, right Lorne?"
"Ahhh, no!"
But he really is a bad bad bad liar, isn't he?
This is the time I realized that Angel really does respect Lorne. Because he says "please".
Ha! Fred scares off the homeless guy with her crazier-than-him-ness.
Oh, Fred. Fred, Fred, Fred. Her breakdown scene always makes me so sad. "I didn't mean to get so lost." "If you're here, and you see me, then it's real, and it did happen."
But the breakdown needed to happen for her to move on.
Hey! That demon! It sort of has the same body-type (not head, but body) of the demons from the dimension where Jasmine comes from. [/sidebar]
Everybody fight! Go, daddy B, whacking the big cockroach! MommaB, smack him with a bus! Woo hoo!! ;D
"Sure, there is the occasional demon who tries to kill us with pillows . . . " Gosh, you mean like how Angel will try to kill Wes in a later ep?
"Oh, don't be silly Trish. It's just a severed head." Heeee!
Ah, that meta moment. Will Fred retreat from the scary grown-up world? Or will she recover from her trauma and move forward? Angel can't "save" her from life itself, she has to decide how she wants to live it - hiding in a new cave of her own making or out in the world.
And now . . . Fred sees the crystals and of course she can't turn away from knowledge, from how she puts ideas together and so on. Back up on that horse, Fred!
Ah, all the gang and their own lack of parents and/or parent issues. The Burkles really do look pretty damn good next to all that. (Poor Wes, in particular. Locked under the stairs and emotionally abused kidlet.
)
Heee! Cordy. You can not be soothing. You could not soothe anyone's ass off, much less Angel's. I mean, I love your non-soothyness, but let's be realistic. ;D
There we go, lots of bugs! Big bug monsters everywhere! Fred to the rescue, release their babies with your not-a-toaster!
Hee! Love how her mom is still all proud when she says the thing about fighting when your arms are cut off but dad is suddenly all "WTF?"
Fred's not normal anymore. She is part of the gang and will never go back . . .
I like that her parents really do represent "normal" life, and that the gang all realize and are relatively fine with being not normal. The Angel gang's challenge is living fully within that "not normal-ness", which makes a nice mirror image of the Buffy challenge of always trying to find the normal.
Paint right over that romanticized ideal, Fred. Now you're dealing with your new real life.
;D 
